“Your mother was meant to be a very famous person.” With an attitude like that, no wonder his mother makes young Augusten Burroughs a little anxious.
This unhappy relationship is at the center of “Running With Scissors,” a new movie based on a best-selling memoir by Burroughs. The writer had what could only be termed a surreal childhood in the 1970s, which must have been tough to live through but has proved popular for others to read about.
Most of the film takes Augusten from age 13 into his later teenage years, as his mother Deirdre (Annette Bening), who fancies herself a great poet, grows increasingly unstable. His boozing father (a superb Alec Baldwin) checks out of the scene early.
Deirdre falls under the spell of a quack psychiatrist named Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), who sleeps with her and puts her into a deep Valium-induced lethargy. Augusten is shuttled off to live in the doctor’s house, which is a veritable Disneyland of weirdness.
There, Augusten bonds with Finch’s adolescent daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and becomes attached to Finch’s 35-year-old adopted son (Joseph Fiennes), whose relationship with Augusten turns sexual.
Since Augusten is still a teenager, the latter involvement should be disturbing, but the film treats it as breezily as it treats the other big events in the movie. This is either ironic detachment or shallowness.
The longer “Running With Scissors” goes on, the more one thinks about these kinds of questions. In its chipper fashion, the film strolls from one appalling thing to the next, wrapping itself in upbeat pop songs and a philosophy that sounds like every 1970s self-help book rolled together.
Maybe Burroughs’ writing made this both sad and funny on the page, but the film plods. Writer-director Ryan Murphy, one of the creators of “Nip/Tuck,” gets into serious pacing issues.
His style feels cribbed from Wes (“Royal Tenenbaums”) Anderson’s bittersweet movies, as are some of the songs on the soundtrack. The ’70s bric-a-brac, from Tab soda to avocado-colored kitchens, also is overly familiar.
What this movie does have is acting: Bening is sharp and scary, like a knife bladed on both sides, and the goatish Cox is hilarious as a doctor with immense self-regard. Gwyneth Paltrow is over-qualified in a supporting role, and Joseph Cross (“Flags of our Fathers”) is pleasant but underwhelming as Augusten. Nice to see Jill Clayburgh again, even if her role as Dr. Finch’s wife is hard to believe.
This film may well charm fans of the book. I found it annoying, once the amusing 1970s wackiness wore off.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
